"Kang Yeosang, we've been friends since we're babies and you don't even remember that your best friend right here is the best at sneaking girls into his bedroom."

"Gross," San comments.

"Repulsive," Mingi adds.

"Deserving of a whoop to his ass," Seonghwa says next.

"Not here at this cafe, please," Hongjoong begs.

"Wait, she's in your room?" Yeosang exclaims, but lowers down his voice when their first customers of the day come in.

Seonghwa instantly turns into waiter-mode as he grabs an apron from behind the counter and puts it on. He tends to the customers, all the while idling by the side as he laces his hand behind his back and rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. They wait for him to take the order, join them and they huddle around Wooyoung who's making the coffee. He gets the order to make one cappuccino and one americano, and as he glances towards the cameras subtly - which cannot capture sound - he starts telling how she was the one who dashed into his bedroom first.

"We told her that she could hide in any of the rooms, and my room was the first one she picked," Wooyoung tells them. When Yeosang gives him the look, he adds, "No, I'm not lying. I didn't even touch her."

"I hate to admit it but it's true. She ran to Wooyoung's room like her life depended on it," San helps to add before hissing. "Though I feel sorry for her because she had to see Wooyoung's upper body."

"I would say she's blessed."

"More like traumatized."

"Did you really have to be half-naked at that time when she's in your room?" Seonghwa pulls of a face that's a cross between disgusted and worried. "I hope she's doing fine."

"I had to take a shower and get ready." He rolls his eyes, as if that's the most obvious thing he had to do.

"So we made up a plan, and that was to distract him with my beautiful high-pitched screaming. I did well, didn't I?" Mingi nudges Wooyoung and San, to which both of them nod enthusiastically. "He went into my room like a storm raging but he didn't even find anything. Hacking the chat to make the message appear was easy but I kid you not I almost died from a heart attack when the jumpscare came out. In the haste he forgot that he didn't look into one room: Wooyoung's. Voila, she's safe, and Alexander's pissed."

"That was dangerous, what if he went into your room and found her?" Hongjoong frowns.

Wooyoung puts the two cups on saucers and Seonghwa takes them up, sending them to the customers. He wipes his hands against his own apron, cracks his neck and leans against the counter with a smug smile on his face.

"Even so he wouldn't find her. I'm not that of a fool to hide her anywhere obvious. I found out that she's actually a pretty good climber; might even rival San for it."

"Climber..." Seonghwa trails off. Then he gasps dramatically, "Did you actually ask her to climb up into your bedroom vent?"

"She was actually the one who suggested it and she was pretty chill about it. You know... she seems cool now that I've talked to her properly. What we found out about her doesn't really reflect how she actually is in real life."

Hongjoong looks into the distance, getting lost in his own thoughts, but snaps back into reality as the bell rings when the door opens. Yunho comes into the cafe, munching on a chocolate bar. His left hand holds another one, and he approaches the leader with a neutral face. Wordlessly, with his cheeks puffed from the chocolate in his mouth, he shoves the chocolate bar into the leader's face. The leader takes it, and Yunho turns to the direction of the stairs, leaving him perplexed.

"What on earth just happened?" Hongjoong asks. "Did Yunho really come in or was it just me hallucinating? Is this chocolate bar real?" He shakes it with gusto, trying to prove that the sweet in his hand is not an illusion. He distances it from his face when he confirms it. "Oh snap it's real."

"I think he's saying sorry to you," Seonghwa offers, his hands busy wiping cups clean with a cloth. "Yunho's not the type to get mad for long. Now that I think about it he has never actually gotten mad like yesterday. It was a first."

"I think the chocolate's an illusion. You can give it to me," Yeosang utters as he reaches out for the chocolate bar, but Hongjoong is quick to make it out of his reach.

"Oh frick I forgot Byul's still in the vents. I need to get her out of there," Wooyoung exclaims, slapping his hands to his cheeks before he takes off his apron. He scurries up the stairs while San follows behind, running as if they're in a competition to see who can run the fastest.

"Looks like they warmed up to her." A small smile plays on Seonghwa's lips.

"And you think that's a good thing?" Hongjoong asks.

"Why not? She doesn't have anywhere else to go and while she's here we can help her with her debt. Did you forget that we owe her our lives?"

"I agree. We gain more money than we actually use them, so why don't we make her a part of us? She can help us work, earn herself some money and pay her debt. We have some extra help, and she gets to pay her debt with the money she earned. It's a win-win situation," Yeosang interrupts.

"Hardly a win-win when we don't actually need extra help; we already have 8 on the team."

"Yeah, and you were the one who suggested for her to be Hwayoung's nanny when we don't need her as that. Hong, you're being so hypocritical, do you know that?"

"It was just for a cover and I had to come up with something quick. I left my brain when I came up with that, honestly."

"We don't need to fight over this," Mingi groans. "We agreed to let her stay here until we figure out what to do with her, remember?"

---

Wooyoung and San stare at the vent on the former's bedroom ceiling, whispering among themselves as they point at the grate.

"Do you think she's still up there?"

"She's too quiet and she's not answering, do you think she ran out of oxygen and fainted or something?" San's voice starts to get panicky as they've been calling out her name multiple times but they haven't heard a peep from her.

Wooyoung tiptoes, trying to get a good view but he doesn't have enough height so all he sees are the mold on the upper part of his bedroom wall and the cracked ceiling. He hits the back of his hand on San's chest repeatedly while instructing, "Climb up and see if she's still there. You don't think she ran away by following the vents, do you?"

San looks sulky at the mention of this. "That would be a pity though, she seems like a cool person to be around."

"You feel that way because you think she's pretty."

"She is, isn't she?"

"Try to be subtle with your affection won't you?"

"What are you guys doing staring at the vent like you're stargazing? Where's the girl?" Yunho appears at the door, face innocent. He quickly takes a hand to wipe the remaining chocolate at the corner of his mouth with his palm.

"You should call her Byul and she's in the vent, but she's not answering so we're worried that something might have happened to her or she ran away."

Yunho looks quizzical but decides not to raise questions related to what he's curious of. Instead he simply gestures to the vent and says, "Just go and take a peek."

San takes Wooyoung's chair before he jumps on top of it, launching himself up so he gets a grip on the grate before unlatching it open, letting it hang. With the help of Wooyoung and Yunho watching on, he climbs on top of Wooyoung's shoulders, steadies himself and puts his head through the opening so he can get a good look of the pathways inside.

He gives off a subtle breath of relief as he spots her, stuffed with her belongings in the cramped space. It's no wonder that she didn't hear them; she's sleeping. He blinks once, twice, then thrice as he stares at a thing sitting on top of her head, but Byul continues sleeping even while she's at an uncomfortable position with her chest down.

"She's safe, she's just sleeping," he whispers, eliciting a sigh of relief from Wooyoung who's holding on to his legs firmly. "She must have been really drained."

"That's nice to hear, but why are you whispering?" Wooyoung asks, his voice a few pitches higher than him.

"Because we have a problem. There's a rat sitting on top of her head."

"A rat?" Wooyoung exclaims.

"Shh, you're going to wake her up and startle the rat- oh frick it's coming towards me! Lower me down, lower me down now!"

He screams as the rat scampers towards him, as if already aiming to bite off his nose. He immediately ducks but both of them lose balance, toppling over to the ground in a puddle of mess. It seems that his shout had woken her up because they hear a thud against a metal surface followed by a loud 'ouch' from above. Then again they confirm that she, too, has seen the rat because her scream echoes through the pathways and into the bedroom.

Just as quickly as she spotted the rat, the animal gets startled by her sudden movement so it tries to run away, but meets the bad fate of plunging to the ground through the opening. It lands on top of San's body, who's still tangled on the floor together with Wooyoung. Not done with its plot to escape, it runs along San's chest and stops at his chin. There is a moment of silence as the rat scrunches up its nose and brings its paws to its mouth. San opens up his mouth, but Wooyoung beats him to it.

"AHHHHH there's a rat in my bedroom!" Wooyoung pushes San off him, wanting to get away from the pest.

"I know, I saw it first!" San retaliates, shaking his body vigorously so that he can get the rat off his body.

It seems like they're in a fight with each other as they try to get away from the rat. At first it seems like the two guys are in the winning spot as they untangle from each other and proceed to find a stack of papers that they roll so they can chase the animal away. But the tables are turned when the rat suddenly u-turns and chases them instead, resulting in Wooyoung piggybacking San as they try to work together to escape. It seems unsuccesful because they are only running around in the room, being chased by the rat, which is getting faster every second.

Yunho stands by the door, sighing while looking at his teammates wrestling with the rat on the floor. "Even my precious cupcake isn't scared of rats."

He looks up to see Byul peeking through the opening, half-sheepish, half-amused when she sees the chaotic battlefield. He catches her small laughter that is in pulse with their desperate yelps; the corner of her eyes crinkle and her teeth that makes her look like a cute rabbit are exposed. Then she puts a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking as she laughs to her heart's content.

"Don't just stand there and look! Do something!" San shouts helplessly as his arms wrap tightly around Wooyoung.

"What do you want me to do?" Yunho asks calmly. He lets their cries drown as he leaves the room.

They thought he's about to leave them to die with the rat but he comes around with a metal wastebasket and a piece of cardboard taken from the store. He jumps into the race with an outstretched wastebasket, interposing himself between the predator and the two prey. He rolls around on the floor to try and make the rat find a dead end in the wastebasket, but now it seems like the number of prey has increased to three as the rat keeps on outsmarting them. It runs a course in the room before it bumps into Wooyoung's chest of drawers, no gap for it to squeeze through.

Yunho takes this as a chance to plop the wastebasket over it, creating a makeshift cage. As the panicked rat clamps its fingers around the metal mesh and climbs up to find a way out, he quickly slides the cardboard under the mouth of the wastebasket, conveniently trapping it. He lets out a whoop of triumph as he squashes the cardboard and wastebasket together, flipping it so that the object is the right side up, its mouth covered by the cardboard.

"Open the window!" he shouts as San grapples with the window handle and lifts it up. He throws open the window, stepping aside to make way for Yunho.

"Are you actually going to throw the rat outside my window?"

"Then what do you want me to do?" He struggles to contain the rat which has already made its way to the mouth of the wastebasket. "Throw it at you?"

"I- oh alright! Throw it far away, make sure it doesn't come back,"

Yunho slides open the wastebasket before thrusting it out, making sure he already has his hands out the window by the time he turns the object upside down. He throws away the cardboard and uses both hands to shake it, forcing the rat that's gripping the walls. He thumps his hand once on the bottom and the rat slides out, squeaking before it surrenders itself to gravity, its body splayed out. It lands on a bed of trash, looks up once as if trying to imprint the faces of its wrongdoers in its tiny brain before disappearing among the food boxes and household waste.

All three of them collapse on the ground, exhausted. They look to the ceiling, see Byul staring at them with intent as she props up her elbows and places her chin on her palms.

"We must've looked stupid," Wooyoung says to no one in particular, "running around being scared of a rat."

"It was a huge one," San interjects. "That's not a rat, it's a demon."

"I'm sorry to interrupt but can any of you kindly help me get down? I need something to land on."

"Byul, we'd love to, but we're too traumatized by the rat we can't get up," San replies as he puts a hand on his stomach. "Wait, Yunho where are you going? We're supposed to be traumatized and unable to get up. You're making me a liar."

Silently Yunho places himself below the opened air vent, stretching out his arms upwards and beckoning towards her. Confused, she inches forward but he quickly shakes his head and says robotically, "Not you, your stuff. Throw them to me."

Embarrassed for thinking that he's actually offering himself to catch her, she disappears into the vent, then throws her bag without even looking. It hits him on the face and before he even manages to say something, another plastic bag filled with the essentials Seonghwa gave her finds place on his face.

"This is why you shouldn't make her mad," Wooyoung comments.

"What do you mean I'm making her mad-" The final object, her pair of house slippers slap him on the face.

"That's it, that's all the stuff I have. Can you put a chair below me or something so that I can land on it?" she doesn't look at Yunho, but addresses San and Wooyoung instead. "Please?"

Yunho shifts his position so that her view of the two on the floor are blocked and she's forced to look at him instead before wordlessly, he stretches out his arms again.

"I told you I'm done giving you my stuff. I just need something to land on-"

"Then land in my arms."

---

[A/N:

I'm just wondering... I know it's very, very early in the series and nothing has been developed yet but do you ship Byul with any of the members? lmao

I'm currently feeling like a zombie rn because I've been studying since morning and now it's almost night. I'm so nervous for my test tomorrow though and my eczema has been flaring up because I'm so stressed out these days... therefore I write to calm myself down. This is why I've been updating so much lately lol

Wonderland MV has reached 10 million views omg it's what they deserve!!! I'm glad more people are stanning them but I'm also a lil bit sad because they're not gonna be our little secret anymore hahaha BUT they deserve to be known more because... kings.

Thank you so much for 2k reads uwu all of you are amazing <3]